Health Tech Brand HopStair Reaches Investors and Users with Engaging Animation Campaign

HopStair is a growing, London-based health tech company. The organization’s ultimate goal is to enable people to develop self-confidence, allowing them to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.

When HopStair approached MOWE, they needed help to gain traction among users and secure funding in the competitive digital health space. We proposed a variety of targeted methods that leveraged the power of animation to address these pressing concerns. 

The result? A multi-video campaign addressing each of HopStair’s main challenges — from spreading awareness of the platform and the importance of increasing confidence to delivering an elevator pitch that captures investor attention.  

The Client: HopStair, the Self-Confidence Building Digital Health App

The health tech space is saturated — there’s no shortage of apps available claiming to improve mental well-being. But HopStair’s approach is unique. Rather than simply treating the symptoms of poor mental health, they provide the tools to ready individuals for future challenges by encouraging daily training with bite-sized, in-app lessons. Consistent app use serves as strength training of the mind — building the muscles necessary to face adversity with self-assuredness. 

HopStair’s platform is not intended to replace professional medical treatment but to provide additional support for everyday non-clinical mental struggles and pressures. That said, it was developed with input from leading academic centers for behavioral science and psychology, so its solutions are science-based. 

The Challenge: Attain Funding Amid Countless Competitors 

Despite being distinctive, HopStair has had difficulty garnering attention and funding for its product. Additionally, although its team works hard to ship new and engaging content, it has been challenging for its small team to release updates quickly enough to maintain significant user engagement. 

One solution to this problem is to receive the support of investors. Added capital would allow HopStair to expand its team, thus accelerating production and potentially increasing the app’s market presence. But that’s easier said than done. Given the app’s current state and user base, convincing investors of its profitability has been an uphill battle. 

In sum, the team needed to demonstrate not just the uniqueness of their product but also its viability for sustainable growth and revenue generation. 

MOWE is a team of wonderful people, everyone a delight to talk and chat to. The team truly cares, takes time to get to know you and listens to your (at least in my case) endless rambles and will come back with solutions and ideas that are more you and your business than you could hope for. They guide you along your journey, involve you in every step, are transparent, proactive, communicative, and just wonderful to work with. Of course their results are absolutely fantastic and have wowed everyone I know.

Nadine Pfeifer, Founder and CEO of HopStair

The Goals: How MOWE Aimed to Help this Health Tech Brand

Given the hurdles HopStair hoped to overcome, we endeavored to create an animated video campaign that would:

• Inspire viewers to use the product with a captivating, relatable character experiencing familiar challenges — and slaying them with confidence, thanks to HopStair.
  
• Educate the audience through stories demonstrating why building self-confidence matters so they understand the product’s point.
  
• Positively position the product to gain investor attention and funds with videos that explain HopStair and its value, as well as evoke unforgettable emotions (thereby making the brand itself unforgettable).

The Solution: Our 5-step Framework for Campaign Building

The client’s challenges demanded a comprehensive approach, which perfectly matched MOWE’s 5As Framework.

1. Analysis and Action Plan

The campaign’s planning started with a bespoke series of meetings to pinpoint the client’s issues and craft corresponding solutions. These meetings included a questionnaire, a one-hour discussion to gather business insights, a two-hour workshop to prioritize and contextualize issues and project potential outcomes, and a final meeting to discuss the proposed three-tiered campaign.

This deep dive resulted in more accurate and targeted recommendations, as all our insights and suggestions were based on information and data gathered directly from the client.

2. Assembly

The client greenlit a three-video campaign strategy from the different options we proposed. In this campaign’s plan, one of the constraints we defined was that the videos would share certain elements—like characters and locations—to build a cohesive motion identity and maximize HopStair’s resources. With an action plan approved, it was time to assemble our production.

Brainstorming the Core Creative Platform 

Our first step was to define a core creative platform around which we could build the entire campaign. Building upon what we learned in discovery and harkening back to the strategic project goals, we determined we needed an active concept to directly engage viewers and highlight what life could look like with bolstered confidence.

After much refinement, the core creative platform became “Unlock Yourself.” This campaign cornerstone puts power in the hands of the audience and puts hope at the center of our project — perfect for HopStair’s mission.

Defining the Mood

A campaign’s mood suggests the spirit and emotion we want viewers to feel after watching the content. We landed on the mood for HopStair by considering what defined the brand at large and boiling it down to key motifs: authenticity, hope, freedom, and confidence. 

With these motifs in mind and references provided by the client, we began the concurrent development of video concepts and visual mood boards, as combining these in one deliverable helps clients see how a project might be visualized.

Developing the Visuals and Character 

An essential part of HopStair’s visual development was presenting a universally relatable main character in whom audiences could see themselves and imprint their own experience. So, rather than crafting a realistic person, we went the other direction and honed in on an abstract humanoid figure—a “person” with a featureless face, emotive postures, and quirkily shaped limbs. 

Our team iterated through different styles for the overarching campaign art style until we landed on an approach that captured the project’s soul. The textured style developed was elevated by the light and shadows, which created visual depth for the scenes and added emotional nuance to make scenes more interesting. More importantly, the style would create moods the audience could relate to, convey an emotional journey, and accentuate our character’s feelings. 

Script, Storyboards, and Illustrations 

Our team developed the scriptwriting in partnership with Hopstair to ensure we communicated their message in the most effective way possible. 

With the script approved, we began individualizing each video during storyboarding and getting strategic with the video order. Why? To be respectful of our client’s budget, we wanted to maximize their resources by focusing first on the longest video to develop key visuals to reuse in subsequent videos. 

HopStair hopes to be a globally appealing brand. After all, gaining self-confidence is relevant to everyone. When it came time for the illustrations, the global nature of MOWE worked perfectly here. Partnering our internal talent with a handful of frequent collaborators, we compiled a specialized team of artists from around the globe to execute our visions for HopStair. The resulting style is a unique blend of perspectives from Mexico, Argentina, Poland, Colombia, Brazil, and the United States.

Animation 

With such a compelling and unique illustration style, the animation team had big shoes to fill. The brushed textures, the character’s unique body design, the reactive lights and shadows, and the playful guiding light posed some interesting creative challenges to the team. Still, we tackled all the challenges without busting our schedule or budget. 

Thanks to the animation (and in harmony with every element), the audience doesn’t just witness the character move from stress, fear, and struggle to strength, power, and confidence; they join the journey.

Music and Sound

We aimed to create a cohesive sound design package in which diegetic sound effects (FX) and music would support each other, reinforcing the character’s journey and strengthening our messaging. 

To achieve this, we envisioned starting each video heavy on sound effects and light on music. The real-world sounds — like keyboard clacking, people at work, phone notifications, etc. — were used to overload our audience with the familiar melody of daily nuisances that nag at the mental well-being of our character. 

Meanwhile, the musical progression and the music style would react to the character’s journey, beginning with an ambient blues tone that lies in the background. Then, growing stronger and brightening to an upbeat African-inspired dance adventure, all as the character grows in confidence, dipping and rising to fit the ups and downs experienced along the way. 

3. Audit and Adapt

HopStair was thrilled with the videos we delivered, but that’s not the end of our engagement. Now, we’re actively monitoring their performance. 

After a few months, we will sit with the client to review the data, celebrate our wins, and propose optimizations where we see fit. Our guarantee is that we make sure the videos perform at their best for a period longer than the industry standards.

The Results: An Endeavor to Put HopStair More Squarely on the Health Tech Product Map 

Our structured approach to the HopStair project helped our client better understand their marketing challenges and provided actionable content and data-driven insights to guide their growth efforts for months and years to come. Additionally, we met our goal of creating a final product that would engage users and investors, endearing them to HopStair.